Saturday 1 May 2001
Today was a holiday, so Zaboru decided to spend a quiet day with his family on the 52nd floor of the ZAGE office. Unlike the other floors filled with meeting rooms, testing labs, and busy employees, the 52nd floor had been designed almost like a private house inside the tower. It was a personal relaxation floor prepared for Zaboru and his family, a place where they could rest without leaving the building. There was a cozy living room, a small kitchen, a dining space, soft carpets, shelves filled with books and toys, and wide windows that showed the city stretching far below them.
Because of that, the 52nd floor did not feel like a corporate office at all. It felt warm, quiet, and lived-in. Sunlight poured gently across the room, touching the sofa, the low table, and the scattered children's toys on the carpet. The distant noise of ZAGE's work floors felt far away, almost like another world. Here, Zaboru was not the president of a massive gaming empire. He was simply a husband and a father spending time with his family.
Zenshin sat on the carpet with several sheets of paper scattered around him, seriously drawing something with the concentration of a small artist working on a masterpiece. Arumi was beside him, silent as usual, watching her older brother with wide curious eyes. She did not disturb him or grab his crayons. She simply sat there happily, as if watching Zenshin draw was already entertaining enough for her. Every time Zenshin moved his hand across the paper, Arumi's tiny gaze followed it with quiet admiration.
Zaboru watched them for a moment and smiled softly before returning his attention to the screen in front of him. Right now, he was relaxing on the sofa while watching RULY's livestream, and he truly had not expected it to become this ridiculous. The moment the X-Box launched the disc into the pillow shield, Zaboru burst into loud laughter.
"Hahahaha! What the hell!? It's literally canon!"
His laugh was so loud that even Zenshin paused his drawing for a second, while Arumi blinked and looked toward her father with innocent confusion.
At that moment, Ayumi arrived from the small kitchen area, carrying a plate of lasagna she had just cooked for him. Even though they were inside ZAGE Tower, the way she casually walked toward him made the 52nd floor feel completely like their own home. She placed the plate in front of Zaboru with a gentle smile, then tilted her head curiously.
"Hmm? Zabo, what is it? Why are you laughing so hard?"
Zaboru chuckled. "Well, apparently Microsoft didn't just make the X-Box as a console. They accidentally made a secret weapon too. The X-Canon! Hahaha!"
Ayumi sat down beside him, looking confused.
"X-Canon?"
Zaboru pointed at the monitor. "Apparently, when some very specific conditions are met, the console gets confused and ejects the disc while it's still spinning. The result? The disc flies out at ridiculous speed. That streamer just proved it live. The thing actually left a dent in his shield."
Ayumi's eyes widened immediately.
"Wait... isn't that dangerous?"
"Yeah," Zaboru replied without hesitation. "But it's also kind of badass."
Ayumi stared at him for several seconds.
"Only you would describe a hardware malfunction as badass."
"Hey, if reality gives me free material, I'm taking it."
Zaboru grinned while taking a bite of the lasagna she had prepared.
"This is exactly the kind of weird gaming story people remember for years. Twenty years from now, people won't remember some random firmware update. They'll remember the time a console tried to attack its owner."
Ayumi couldn't help laughing at that.
"That's actually true."
"Hehhehehe. I'm definitely referencing this in a future ZAGE game. Maybe an easter egg. Maybe a weapon. Maybe an entire game based on it. Imagine the True X-Canon!"
Ayumi chuckled. "Please don't tell me you're serious. Won't Microsoft cause trouble for ZAGE if you actually do that?"
"Oh, I'm very serious. And who cares about them?" Zaboru replied with a mischievous grin. "Besides, if they complain, I'll just rename it to 'Definitely-Not-X-Canon.' Problem solved."
Ayumi chuckle "That is not how trademarks work."
Ayumi shook her head while smiling.
Somewhere nearby, Zenshin and Arumi had slowly stopped what they were doing. The children had been listening to the conversation for a while now, though neither of them fully understood what an X-Canon actually was.
Zenshin casually walked over while trying his best to act like a normal child his age. To anyone else, it looked completely natural, but Zaboru knew his son well enough to notice the tiny differences that Zenshin just had to pretend. Even so, it only made him look cuter.
"Papa, what's a cannon?"
Zaboru grinned while playing along.
"A cannon is something that goes boom, Zen-chan."
"Oh."
Zenshin nodded immediately, as if that explanation had answered every question in the universe and quickly lost interest.
"A very scientific explanation," Ayumi muttered.
Zaboru shook his head "Ayumi oh Ayumi you know that I'm an excellent teacher," Zaboru replied with a proud grin Ayumi just smiling "Mockingly".
Meanwhile, Arumi tilted her head.
"Boom?"
"Very boom."
"Big boom?"
"Very big boom."
Arumi thought about it seriously for a few seconds.
"Bigger than Uncle Akechi when he's angry?"
The room instantly became silent.
Zaboru blinked.
Ayumi blinked.
Then both of them burst out laughing.
"Who taught her that?" Ayumi asked between laughs.
Zaboru laughs "Definetly your sister Asumi.."
Arumi looked confused by their reaction.
"Well?" she asked again.
Zaboru wiped a tear from his eye.
"Yes. Probably bigger than Uncle Akechi when he's angry."
"Wow."
Arumi looked genuinely impressed.
After that, Arumi nodded seriously before climbing onto the sofa beside Zaboru. Without saying anything else, she leaned against his arm and continued watching the livestream on the screen.
Zenshin soon followed, sitting on the floor directly in front of the sofa while holding his drawing paper.
For a few moments, nobody talked.
The room was filled only with the distant sounds of the livestream, the smell of Ayumi's lagasgna, and the peaceful atmosphere of the family's private floor.
Zaboru looked at his wife, then at his children, and his expression softened.
This was his favorite moment in the whole world with his preciousness.
Meanwhile now already Sunday 2 May 2001.
Microsoft Offices.
An emergency meeting was being held inside Microsoft headquarters. The situation had escalated much faster than anyone expected. RULY's livestream had exploded across the internet in less than a day, spreading through ZAGE forums, X-Box forums, gaming message boards, and even several technology news outlets. Microsoft's public relations team had already tried to slow the story down, but it was almost impossible to control. Every time one thread was locked, three more appeared somewhere else. Every time someone called it fake, another user reposted the clip of the disc hitting RULY's ridiculous pillow shield.
The problem was no longer just a strange hardware bug. It had become a public joke.
Inside the meeting room, the mood was heavy. Printed forum screenshots were scattered across the table, several engineers had not slept properly, and the PR department looked like they had aged five years overnight. On the projector screen, the word "X-Canon" appeared in one of the forum titles, followed by thousands of laughing replies.
Bill Gates stared at the screen in silence for a few seconds.
Then his expression hardened.
The X-Box had only just entered the market, and instead of people only talking about its power, online features, or future game lineup, they were now joking that Microsoft had accidentally created a console capable of firing DVDs. For a company trying to prove itself in the gaming industry, this was humiliating.
Bill finally looked at the engineers sitting across from him.
"So," he said slowly, his voice calm but clearly dangerous, "apparently our console is now being called the X-Canon."
No one laughed.
Even the people who wanted to laugh knew it would be a very bad career decision.
Bill tapped the table with one finger. "A name created by a streamer with a taped pillow shield is now spreading faster than our actual marketing campaign. That is impressive in the worst possible way."
He looked toward the engineering team.
"And apparently this still cannot be reproduced here... despite Microsoft spending millions of dollars developing, testing, and validating this product. I wonder why."
Nobody answered immediately.
The engineer gulped, while the head engineer carefully chose his words.
"Well... boss, it's an extremely rare edge case. Under normal circumstances, the system works exactly as intended. The problem only occurs when several unlikely conditions happen at the same time. The player must be connected to X-Box Live, the connection has to be slow enough to create command delays, the game must still be actively streaming data from the disc, and then the player has to attempt to launch another disc-based game through the dashboard without properly closing the current one first."
Bill stared at him.
The engineer immediately continued.
"Honestly, it's the kind of scenario most users should never encounter naturally. During development, we spent millions of dollars testing hardware reliability, thermal behavior, disc read accuracy, firmware stability, and thousands of normal user interactions. The issue is that this specific bug isn't purely hardware-related. It's a synchronization problem between the game process, the online service, the dashboard interface, and the DVD drive firmware."
Another engineer nervously added, "To be fair, sir, most players don't randomly try to launch another game while they're still connected to an online match."
Bill slowly raised an eyebrow and Bill folded his arms.
"And a man with a pillow shield found the one scenario we missed?"
The engineer immediately regretted speaking.
"...Until apparently now."
A few people lowered their heads to avoid eye contact.
The head engineer cleared his throat.
"And honestly, we will fix it. For now, the fastest solution is a hotfix. We can simply disable the 'Insert Disc' option whenever another game is still active in memory. That should completely prevent users from triggering the bug while we investigate the underlying synchronization issue."
Bill folded his arms.
"How long for the hotfix?"
"Less than a week."
"And the permanent solution?"
The room became noticeably quieter.
The head engineer hesitated.
"That depends on what is actually causing the timing conflict. If it's a dashboard-level issue, perhaps a few weeks. If the problem exists inside the drive firmware communication layer..." He paused. "Potentially longer."
Bill sighed heavily.
"So let me summarize. We spent millions of dollars developing the console. We tested thousands of scenarios. Then a man with a pillow shield found the one thing we missed."
Nobody in the room dared to answer.
Because unfortunately, that was exactly what had happened.
Bill Gates sighed heavily.
"Okay. Make sure the fix is done properly. This has already damaged our reputation, and I don't want anything like this happening again. Do you understand?"
The engineers immediately nodded.
"Yes, sir."
The meeting slowly began to disperse. Engineers returned to their workstations, software teams prepared emergency fixes, and the PR department started drafting statements that nobody was confident would actually help. Everyone had work to do.
Bill remained seated for a moment.
The room gradually became empty until only a few people were left gathering documents.
"X-Canon..." Bill muttered.
Just saying the word made him feel tired.
The nickname had become ridiculously popular overnight. Forum users were creating memes. Players were editing images of X-Boxes firing discs like military artillery. Some people had even started ranking fictional weapons against the X-Canon. Bill had seen one post claiming that the X-Canon could defeat tanks if equipped with enough copies of HORI.
The worst part was that people genuinely found it funny.
Microsoft could fight technical problems.
Microsoft could fix bugs.
Microsoft could patch firmware.
But fighting a joke was much harder.
Once the internet decided something was funny, trying to stop it usually made it spread even faster.
One member of the marketing team carefully approached him.
"Sir... should we issue a statement specifically addressing the X-Canon nickname?"
Bill looked at him.
The marketing employee immediately regretted asking.
After several seconds of silence, Bill simply shook his head.
"No."
"Sir?"
"The more we acknowledge it, the more people will use it."
The employee nodded.
Honestly, Bill was probably right.
A week from now, another controversy will appear somewhere on the internet. A month from now, people would find something else to laugh about. The internet moved quickly.
Or at least that was what Bill hoped and knew.
He stood up from his chair and grabbed his jacket.
"Let's focus on fixing the actual problem."
The employee nodded.
As Bill walked toward the exit, he paused for a moment after noticing a computer screen someone had forgotten to close.
A forum page was still open.
The latest thread title read:
"X-CANON MK2 WHEN?"
Replies: 8,247
Bill stared at it.
Then he slowly closed his eyes.
For the first time that day, he genuinely considered taking the rest of the afternoon off X-Canon. It's gonna take a long time to forget.
to be continue
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